Colt McCoy

*** 12:35 p.m. updated version. The original was written in a bleary-eyed state very late last night; I’ve revised the intro and a few individual items.

Congrats, BCS honchos. The biggest winner of the bowl season was, once again, your system.

Just because Boise State’s sitting there at 14-0 with nobody to play doesn’t mean the Bowl Championship Series failed.

Quite the opposite: It did exactly what it was designed to do. It matched undefeated Texas against undefeated Alabama for the national title and generated huge interest, huge ratings and huge dollars along the way.

The power brokers (TV execs, university presidents and BCS conference commissioners) are quite pleased, I’m sure.

As an added bonus, the system gained political protection — and by that I mean protection from politicians:

It’s much more difficult to prove the system is exclusionary when two of the four at-large spots go to teams from non-AQ conferences (TCU got in automatically, Boise State by the good graces of the Fiesta Bowl).

I moved the Tide into the top spot following their Week One victory over Virginia Tech and left them there for all but one week thereafter. They were mighty close to a wire-to-wire No. 1 for me.

* I had Texas in the No. 2 spot, and it really didn’t require much thought.

Had the Longhorns lost by three touchdowns with a healthy Colt McCoy, it would have been a different story. But I saw no reason to punish UT for a close loss to the best team without its starting quarterback.

Quite the contrary: They deserved to hold their position or, in my case, move up. (They were No. 3 on my ballot going into the bowl season, behind Alabama and Cincinnati.)

* I ranked one-loss Florida in the No. 3 spot, one above undefeated Boise State, for this reason:

Toby Gerhart is much more than a Heisman Trophy candidate. He’s also a Heisman Trophy test case.

Can a player who received no preseason hype, flew under the Heisman radar until the middle of the season and toiled for a four-loss team win the most prestigious award in college football?

Or will on-field performance always be trumped by hype, television appearances and won-loss records?

We’ll find out tonight, as Gerhart seeks to become the first Heisman winner from a four-loss team since 1969 and the first from a Pac-10 school other than USC since 1970.

He appears to have a terrific chance.

Gerhart and Alabama tailback Mark Ingram are tied in espn.com’s Heisman Watch, while Ingram leads by a slight margin on the highly-respected Heisman Pundit ballot.

Running a close third in both is Nebraska defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh, who turned in a performance for the ages in the Big 12 title game.

“He’s the wild card, the in-vogue candidate,’’ said Chris Huston, who operates the Heisman Pundit website.

This year, there’s a place for in-vogue candidates because for the first time, Heisman voting was exclusively electronic. Every voter could wait until last Saturday – for the conclusion of the Big 12 and SEC championship games — to submit a ballot. (Nonetheless, Huston estimates that 15 percent of the more than 900 voters opted to submit their ballots early.)

What, if any, impact did the final Saturday have on the voting? It would seem Texas quarterback Colt McCoy (three interceptions) lost ground relative to Ingram (three touchdowns) and Suh (4.5 sacks).

But did sitting out the final Saturday help or hinder Gerhart’s case?

He might have picked up some Midwest votes by running for 205 yards against Notre Dame in the Cardinal’s season finale two weeks ago.

At the same time, he didn’t share the big stage with Ingram, Suh and McCoy – a potential problem for Gerhart’s candidacy given that he received so little national attention until the final month of the season.

“Toby did get a late start and his team did lose four games – that all plays into it,’’ said Jim Plunkett, the Stanford quarterback who won the award in 1970. “And there’s definitely an eastern and southern bias to the voting.’’

That bias is about more than a team’s television appearances or its top-25 ranking.

Media members comprise 870 of the 926 Heisman voters. The voting bloc is divided into six regions, five located east of the Rocky Mountains. The West region, which includes North and South Dakota, is under-represented in the Heisman voting based on its percentage of the population.

Winning the west won’t be enough for Gerhart.

“Of all the candidates, he has one region that he should dominate,’’ said Huston, the Heisman Pundit. “The gap between No. 1 and 2 in the west should be larger than anywhere else.

“Gerhart needs to pile up as much of a margin as he can in the west and be on as many ballots as possible in the other areas. If he gets on enough, he could eek it out.’’

Huston, who’s based in Southern California, said he voted for Gerhart, followed by McCoy and Suh.

“The Northeast could be the deciding region. The Mid-Atlantic has a southern makeup, and Ingram is from Flint (Michigan), so he could get some votes there. The Midwest will be a dogfight.

“Gerhart is a blue-collar guy from an elite academic institution. He could be an Ed Marinaro-type’’ — the Cornell running back and 1971 Heisman runner up – “who plays well with the Ivy League crowd in the Northeast.

“Yes, he played for an 8-4 team. But statistically, he’s head and shoulders above the other guys. There’s no comparison with Ingram.’’

Tonight, we’ll find out if that matters.

*** Early version of a story I wrote for Saturday’s Mercury News …

Toby Gerhart is much more than a Heisman Trophy candidate. He’s also a Heisman Trophy test case.

Can a player who received no preseason hype, flew under the Heisman radar until the middle of the season and toiled for a four-loss team win the most prestigious award in college football?

Or will on-field performance always be trumped by hype, television appearances and won-loss records?

We’ll find out Saturday, as Gerhart seeks to become the first Heisman winner from a four-loss team since 1969 and the first from a Pac-10 school other than USC since 1970.

Random and not-so-random thoughts on Toby Gerhart’s remarkable charge into the heart of the Heisman race …

* The guess here is that Gerhart is invited to New York when the finalists are announced this afternoon. Whether there are three, four or five, he should be included.

But will he win it?

Despite his on-field performance and his lofty position in the “Heisman Pundit” rankings and espn.com’s Heisman Watch, I have a hard time believing he’ll take home the hardware — and that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t take home the hardware.

Nice, well-reported story by Okanes yesterday about Jahvid Best and the Heisman (he’s got all the voices you want to hear from).

Mr. 80-yard-run is attempting to become the first Cal player to win the Heisman and the first non-USC player from the Pac-10 to reach NYC as a top-three vote-getter since UCLA’s Cade McNown in ’98. (The last non-USC player from the Pac-10 to win it: Jim Plunkett in 1970.)

Given the loaded-beyond-belief field of Heisman candidates, I can’t help but think that Saturday’s opener vs. Maryland is a break-but-not-make game for Best’s campaign.

Listening to Jeff Tedford talk about Jahvid Best yesterday at a Bay Area media function (which I attended) and then reading his comments from Pac-10 media day last week, (did not attend), I couldn’t help thinking about Best as a candidate, about his chances and about the difference between Best and the last two Heisman “contenders” to come through Berkeley.

* He’s better equipped than Marshawn Lynch and DeSean Jackson to make a serious run at the trophy.

He has Jackson’s speed/score-from-anywhere ability but will have the ball in his hands more often, which means more chances to make SportsCenter and more chances to rack up big numbers to impress voters in other sections of the country.

He’ll have as many opportunities as Lynch did to make big plays but a better chance to make them because of his speed. He’ll also handle with the media and promotional aspects better than Lynch, who was not comfortable in front of cameras or notebooks. Best is soft spoken, smooth and thoughtful.